


if you're leaving, i gotta know why

by shinelikestars



Category: Scream (TV)
Genre: F/F, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Suicide, basically just raw emotions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-25
Updated: 2021-02-25
Packaged: 2021-03-12 19:42:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29514801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shinelikestars/pseuds/shinelikestars
Summary: audrey has always thought the trope of the final girl stupid, especially after she's dubbed a member of "Lakewood's Final Girls" after Kieran's arrest. but it gives her a degree of comfort, knowing that being a final girl means you've witnessed the last of the killings, the last of the loss.until she finds out, in the worst of ways, that Kieran and Piper can still kill long after the blood and gore have stopped.
Relationships: Audrey Jensen & Brooke Maddox, Emma Duval & Noah Foster & Audrey Jensen & Brooke Maddox, Emma Duval/Audrey Jensen, Gustavo Acosta/Brooke Maddox, Noah Foster & Audrey Jensen
Comments: 1
Kudos: 3





	if you're leaving, i gotta know why

**Author's Note:**

> title taken from "Love Like Ghosts" by Lord Huron.
> 
> MASSIVE TW for suicide, grief, etc
> 
> this is how i deal w big raw emotions in my life and the idea of having to say bye to ppl i care about haha so sorry if it isn't particularly well-formed
> 
> hope y'all enjoy pls take care of yourselves <3

Audrey finds out through a Facebook message.

She’s confused when she gets the notification – honestly, she’s shocked she has them on, seeing as she only even has a Facebook to share the occasional picture and life update with her grandmother who lives upstate – but it doesn’t take long for the panic to set in once she processes the words in front of her.

_hey girlie, so sorry to hear about Emma, i’m here if you need anything xoxo_

The message comes from a girl she hasn’t talked to since high school, Ashley or Madisyn or something, some former crony of Nina’s who Audrey is pretty sure only stays on social media to try to retain a smidge of that faded popularity Nina once gifted to her. 

Beyond Kieran and Piper’s ghosts, it’s the worst possible person Audrey can imagine finding out this kind of news from. If the news is what she fears it may be, that is.

A painful twisting starts in her gut as she swipes to her favorited contacts with shaking hands and hits Emma’s name. She prays silently to whatever god her dad preaches about every Sunday as the phone rings once, twice, three times. She prays that this is a mistake, that Ashley-Madisyn-whatever is referring to some _other_ Emma that Audrey’s forgotten having been friends with, that she can’t be feeling her world collapse underneath her feet all because of a fucking Facebook message. The memories of her sophomore and junior years come flooding back, flashbacks of running into buildings with a dry mouth and pounding heart, relics of the fear and desperation Piper and Kieran etched into her very being in those days.

It can’t be true. They can’t have made it out of that warehouse, seen Piper die before their eyes, read Kieran’s autopsy report with a mix of grief and relief in their chests, just to have this happen. In all the stories Audrey has heard, in all the horror novels Noah has given to her, she’s never forgotten that there’s usually only one final girl, but she’s always told herself that she and Emma would be different. There are supposed to be _three_ final girls in their story, her and Brooke and Emma, three final girls who will forever joke about possibly being miles apart but being eternally connected by their shared trauma.

And, secretly, Audrey has always thought that if that number were to be reduced to two, it would be Brooke and Emma left.

There was never supposed to be a world where she and Brooke are the two still standing.

But when Emma’s phone goes to voicemail, a strange calm washes over her, a demented sort of peace, and Audrey knows.

That’s the world she’s in now.

•

She gets in her car and drives like a madwoman, not taking time to pack, not stopping by a neighbor’s to let them know she’ll be out of state for a while, not even checking to see how much gas she has in the tank. Audrey merely plugs her phone in and gets on the highway, eyes so focused on the road that it’s almost painful. She won’t let herself think about it, won’t allow herself to consider what might be waiting for her in Lakewood. If she thinks about it, she’ll have to consider that her worst nightmare has possibly (probably) come true.

She’s not sure she’ll make the drive if she stops to think about that.

She’s nearing two hours in when her phone starts to ring and Brooke’s name flashes up on the console. Audrey considers not answering, lest this call derail her entire trip, but she can’t send a girl she nearly died with to voicemail. Especially not when she’s driving to find out if their best friend (Audrey doesn’t let herself throw in the other adjective she’d use to describe her relationship to Emma) is lying cold in a morgue her own mother used to run.

She takes a breath, steadies herself as best she can going 80 miles per hour on a freeway, and hits “Answer”.

Immediately, the sound of sobs fills the air, and Audrey’s cheeks heat as she’s thrown back into the past, snatches of memories of scrubbing Jake’s guts off of Brooke’s skin and helping her into the shower coming back to haunt her.

“Audrey, oh my _God_ —”

Brooke’s voice is more desperate this time, less resigned than it sounded after Jake’s murder, and Audrey thinks, bitterly, that Piper and Kieran probably would’ve gotten more of a kick out of this, that maybe they would’ve had more fun if they’d just waited for their victims to get a little taste of hope back. Because if they’d heard _this_ , the near wails coming from her friend, then, Audrey thinks, they really would’ve had their revenge.

“Hey, Brooke,” she says, surprising herself with how cold the words come out. It’s shocking, how fast she’s already reverted back to the Audrey that got her through the murder sprees, how easily she’s able to turn that switch off for the sake of levelheadedness. Emma would be disappointed if she could see it; she’s spent the past few years teaching Audrey to avoid doing just that, to embrace the many emotions that their time together has brought to the surface.

She’s always known Audrey’s not a very good student, though.

“I, _ugh_ —” Brooke hiccups, always so delicate even in the middle of crying her eyes out, and Audrey can’t help the sad smile that creeps onto her face. “Are you driving?”

“Yes. I’m about—” She glances over at the GPS. “About six hours away from Lakewood.”

“Audrey, I think you need to pull over,” Brooke says, pageant background taking over, suddenly oh-so-serious and calm.

Audrey swallows hard, heart doing its best to beat right out of her chest. “I’m fine. Brooke,” she adds, voice cracking in spite of her best efforts, “I think I already know what you’re calling about.”

All she hears for a moment is a series of sniffles. “Who told you? What did they say?” Brooke finally asks.

“Somebody from high school. Just said she was sorry to hear about Emma and that she was here for me if I needed anything. I tried to call Emma; it went to voicemail. I can fill in between the lines well enough,” she says. Stubborn tears are welling up in the corners of her eyes, and in the back of her head, she’s distantly aware that it’s probably not safe to drive like this, that the little Emma on her shoulder is screaming at her to take Brooke’s advice and pull over, but doing that feels like giving in. Doing that feels like a one-way ticket to a shitty motel room in a town she doesn’t know and the cheapest bottle of whiskey she can get from the liquor store. Doing that feels like she might never make it to Lakewood, because the whispers and fake apologies and tacky flower arrangements might all work in tandem to scare her away.

“Fuck. _Fuck_ ,” Brooke whispers, and it makes Audrey flinch a little – she’s so unused to hearing the other girl curse like this.

“Audrey, you should really pull over—” she starts again, but Audrey doesn’t let her finish.

“I’m not pulling over, goddamn it, so just fucking tell me already, okay?” she hisses, knuckles going white around her steering wheel.

“Emma’s dead.”

The words hang there, heavy, for what must be a good minute or so, neither of them daring to say another thing. Audrey is sure that, right now, she should be feeling her heart crack in half, should be feeling that missing piece in her soul, or any litany of shitty metaphors for the pure hell that is losing someone you love more deeply than you ever thought you could love another person.

But in this instant, she feels none of that. Instead, an acute numbness settles through her, making her chest tingle and her shoulders slump.

“Okay,” she says simply, feeling like she’s talking around a wad of cotton. She can picture the expression on Brooke’s face right now, the questioning glimmer in her eyes or the pursed lips, the confusion that’s certainly spreading across her friend’s features at the fact that Audrey isn’t on the verge of crashing her car with grief.

“ _God_ , you weren’t supposed to find out like this. I’m so sorry, _fuck_ , I meant to call you, but it’s a small town and with Maggie not around I was the first person the coroner could think of to have come identify her—” Brooke takes a big, gasping breath, and Audrey’s chest starts to ache. “Audrey, I’m so sorry, but you should know before anyone else tells you. She killed herself.”

Audrey hangs up the call.

•

It is well past midnight when she pulls into the driveway of her childhood home, and on any given Saturday night, her parents would have been in bed for hours now, her father in dire need of his beauty sleep to prepare for the Sunday service, her mother forever weary even years into remission.

But this isn’t a regular Saturday night, and so her parents are waiting for her by the door when she arrives, cradling lukewarm mugs of tea that are instantly abandoned when they spot their only child. Audrey has to fight back tears at the sight of her mother’s threadbare robe, some fluffy monstrosity she’d bought for her as a Christmas gift in middle school, and she wonders how fucked in the head she must be, that this is what makes her cry when the most important person in her life has just died.

It’s when her mom presses her into her chest that the floodgates finally open, and she sobs into her mother’s arms in the way she used to after school when Emma abandoned her the first time around, her dad stroking at her hair like he hasn’t been afraid to touch her since she came out freshman year of high school.

“We’re so sorry, honey,” her father says, voice catching, and though his grief rubs at her in entirely the wrong ways, Audrey has to remind herself that he, too, watched Emma grow up, treated her like a second daughter for so long. “But we’re here for you always, and I hope you know the Lord is with you, too.”

Audrey stiffens.

“We love you, sweetie,” her mother whispers, pressing a kiss to her brow, and Audrey forces herself to relax, to stay just a beat longer before peeling herself away. It’s the least she can do, given the trauma she’s put them through over the years, and also given that she’s shown up at their house in the middle of the night, completely unannounced.

She doesn’t let them give her concerned glances for long, and when Audrey tells them she’s heading up to bed, they don’t try to fight her on it, her father eager to get whatever sleep he can before church, her mother bone-tired. Her spine tingles with pain as she climbs into bed, her reward for driving almost eight hours straight, but it’s a blessing in comparison to how numb everything else is. She’d give everything to feel the grief everyone else seems to expect her to be feeling right now, to play the bereaved best friend she knows the town will be awaiting, but if Kieran and Piper taught her anything, it’s that she is utterly incapable of playing a role.

Because it would be a lie to pretend she’s just the bereaved best friend. Not when Emma was her whole world, her past, present, and future all wrapped into one.

Not when she had just heard the words she’d been waiting for so long. _“I love you, Audrey.”_

Because Emma wasn’t just her best friend.

Emma was the love of her life.

~

_The blaring of the alarm is painful to Audrey’s ears, and she can’t help the groan that escapes as she comes kicking and screaming into consciousness, disgustingly bright sunlight filtering through the crappy Walmart curtains they’d been forced to purchase the other week after the cat had shredded their nice ones (payback for neutering him, Emma joked in the self-checkout line)._

_“God, Em, it’s gross that you’re even awake right now,” she mutters, making a show out of rubbing at her eyes to conceal the smile that’s really on her face at the sight of the beautiful girl next to her. “Normal people don’t get up before eight on a Friday.”_

_Emma smirks. “Normal people also don’t survive multiple murder attempts before even graduating high school, so I guess we were never going to fit into that category anyway,” she says, pressing a kiss to Audrey’s forehead. Audrey pretends to squirm – she always acts like she hates the mushy-gushy parts of their relationship, forever in regret of her embarrassing barn confession – but she knows Emma won’t miss the way her face flushes at the touch._

_Audrey has never thought of herself as the domestic type – even throughout college, she always believed she’d grow up to be the “cool aunt”, traveling to find weird European video games for Noah’s kids and dropping in on Brooke and Stavo every once in a while, never the type to settle down. But in this moment, watching Emma’s brow furrow as she concentrates on finishing her packing, knowing their cat is probably curled up in the living room right now, thinking of all the million things she wants to do to and with this girl – she’s never felt sappier or more domestic. The urge to pull Emma back to her and just cozy up in bed is nearly overwhelming._

_“Are you sure you have to go?” she asks, trying to keep that awful touch of whininess out of her tone. Emma’s been planning the trip to Lakewood for a couple weeks, has been mentioning needing to settle up Maggie’s affairs for months on end, but it feels unfair that she has to go_ right now _, when they both have the day off of work and the weather outside is so lovely, when things finally feel something close to comfortable for them, a feeling they so rarely get to enjoy. Maybe, just maybe, she can convince Emma to stay behind, to wait another week, and they can make the drive down together next weekend, grab coffee and croissants from their favorite bakery on the way out, blast cheesy pop songs and scream-sing until their voices give out, keep the windows rolled down if it’s nice enough. Why not? Maybe it’s not the most sensible choice in the world, sure, but it feels like they’ve earned a little bit of selfishness at this point, with everything they’ve been through._

_Emma sighs, and Audrey regrets her question instantly. “I’m sorry, babe, but I just can’t let this wait any longer,” she says, hiking her bag over her shoulder as she stands back up. “Trust me, it’s easier if I just go ahead and get this taken care of now.”_

_Audrey rolls her eyes. “Alright, but you owe me a date night when you get back.” Emma laughs as she bends over to press one last kiss to Audrey’s lips, and it’s obvious as she pulls away that the smile’s not quite reaching her eyes, that the usual Duval charm isn’t there._

_There’s an odd churning in her stomach, a sort of dread that Audrey hasn’t felt in years. It reminds her of the Piper and Kieran years, accompanying her friends to funerals that shouldn’t have been taking place, the awful twisting in her chest that always came with knowing she was witnessing the most permanent of goodbyes._

_Why is she feeling this now? Emma’s just leaving for the weekend, she’ll be back by Monday morning –_

No, she won’t. She’s leaving forever, and there’s absolutely nothing you can do to make her stay, _the terrible voice in her head that sounds just like Piper taunts. And Audrey wants to fight back, wants to tell the voice that she’s_ wrong _, completely wrong, that Emma would never leave her without saying goodbye –_

_But she can’t fight back. Every cell in her body is screaming at her that this is wrong, all wrong, and as she watches Emma leave and hears her cooing goodbye to the cat in the next room, she wants nothing more than to call after her, tell her to come back, tell her she’ll do anything to make up for it if she just fucking_ stays _–_

But you can’t make her stay, Audrey. Because she’s already dead, _Piper whispers._

Audrey bolts awake with a scream.

•

Audrey has always hated living in a small town, but sometimes, it has its perks; it’s morbid, thinking of getting permission to see her girlfriend’s body despite not being next-of-kin as a “perk”, but she’ll take anything, at this point. God knows Lakewood has taken enough from her, and so rarely given in return.

It’s weird, not seeing Maggie’s name on the door as she pulls up, but Audrey is so packed full of grief right now that she doesn’t have room for any extra, so she shoves the thought aside as she parks her car and waits to be buzzed in.

The coroner doesn’t make her wait long – whether out of pity or mere efficacy, she doesn’t know, but in any case, it’s not five minutes before she’s being ushered to the autopsy room, the nauseating scent of formaldehyde stinging her nose. Dr. Samuels – she thinks that’s his name, doesn’t care enough to really pay attention – is chattering in her ear the whole time, something about how he’s glad she was able to get down here so quickly, that the town is just “ _torn up_ ” to lose another young person like this.

The moment she spots the body bag, Audrey stops caring at all, her whole world narrowing down to that cold metal table. She can hear her heart pounding in her ears, her stomach roiling as she resists the urge to vomit that arises as her brain tries to reckon with the knowledge that her best friend, her lover, the only person who’s ever given her another chance, is the one in that body bag.

God, she wishes it were her instead. She was never meant to last this long, anyway – not in Piper and Kieran’s plans, and not in her own, either.

She doesn’t have the courage to approach the bod--- _Emma_ , not yet anyway. The coroner stops in his tracks next to her, and Audrey gets the feeling that he’s holding back from placing a fatherly hand on her shoulder. She thinks she remembers that he has kids, a daughter in high school or something like that. It’s probably not easy for him, cutting open someone not much older than his own children, but that thought gets lost in the million others screaming at her to turn heel and run in the other direction.

She clears her throat and forces herself to ask the first question on her lips, the sick curiosity that’s been nagging at her brain since she found out. She probably shouldn’t be asking this, but she’s not sure she can rest if she doesn’t. “How did she do it?” she says, voice coming out scratchy and rough.

The coroner swallows hard. _Probably weren’t expecting that one, were you?_ Audrey thinks, surprising herself with how bitter the voice in her head sounds. “She hung herself,” he says after a beat. 

Bile rises in Audrey’s throat – _God, not like I would’ve, not like Rachel,_ no – and she’s retching into a nearby trashcan before she can help it, hoarse apologies coming out of her throat as the coroner hastily searches for a tissue. It takes him a minute, and she’s fine by the time he returns, back turned to the body on the table as she tries to compose herself. She refuses the tissue he offers her.

“Was there something I missed?” Audrey asks quietly, stupidly, trying to avoid the coroner’s eyes. She thinks about how, in a slightly different timeline, it would’ve been Maggie standing here. She can’t decide if that would have been better or worse.

The coroner sighs. “The families always ask that. And to be frank with you, sometimes there is something you missed – but I think I can speak for the whole town when I say that, in this case, we all had no idea,” he says, glancing over his shoulder at Emma’s covered corpse.

Audrey tries to hide the irritation on her face at his lie. It’s practiced kindness, really, just his best attempt at soothing the pain the best he can, but it stabs at her worse than his honesty would have. Maybe the entire town didn’t see this coming, but the PTSA moms and gossiping grandmothers she’s run into on the street too many times to count already have made up their minds that Emma was a “ticking time bomb,” a “sad little thing” – a goner, if they’re shedding their sweet Southern manners for once.

Maybe Audrey didn’t see this coming, lovesick and rosy-cheeked as she was, but other people did. It feels like a twisted rehashing of Emma ditching her for Nina freshman year, except this time, she’s left her in the most permanent way possible.

The coroner must sense the shift in atmosphere, because he lets out an even deeper sigh and steps back. “I’ll give you a minute,” he says. “I’ll be in my office if you need me.” Then he’s gone, disappearing through the swinging doors Maggie Duval used so many times, and Audrey can’t avoid this moment any longer. She’s already put off acknowledging reality for too long, not having answered Brooke’s calls or texts since yesterday.

Her tears are already dripping onto her jacket as she approaches the autopsy table. She refuses to open the body bag – she’s seen enough corpses in her lifetime, knows how different people look even minutes after death, won’t give herself that additional trauma. So instead of holding Emma’s hand as everything in her aches to do, she grips the hard metal edge of the table, hoping it’ll anchor her to the reality she so desperately wants to escape. She’d give anything to leave, to let her grief-addled brain transport her into a world where she can still kiss those pretty dimples and bury her face into a freckled shoulder and catch a whiff of mango shampoo, but there’s too much here for her to take care of. She has to stay here, in her own personal hell, for Brooke, for Noah, even for Stavo. She owes that much to her fellow survivors.

“I don’t get it, Em,” she whispers, shoulders shaking as she finally allows herself to give in to the sobs. “You finally had every reason to stay – or I guess I thought you did. Maybe you were missing something I couldn’t see, maybe losing Maggie was still too much, but _fuck_ , Emma, we were _happy_. We finally had it all sorted out. Why did you have to leave?”

Of course, she won’t get a response. The witty girl she knew and loved, the one who didn’t take any shit, who always had a funny quip ready, is long gone. The body mere inches away from her hands is just a shell of what once was.

“And why’d you have to go like Rachel?” Audrey chokes out, tears blurring her vision. “Of all the ways you could’ve gone, you chose the way that I lost the last person I loved? That’s _fucked_ , Em. I don’t understand.” The metal table digs into the skin of her palm, but it’s a background noise kind of pain, blending into the brutal ache of the sheer devastation around her.

She could stay there forever, hunched over the girl she loved until her tears completely soak the fabric of the body bag, but the buzzing of her phone in her back pocket reminds Audrey that the real world has never stopped for her prior losses and certainly won’t stop now. There are things here to take care of, a funeral to plan, a cat eight hours away that she needs to tell her neighbor to feed. Emma has left far too much behind for Audrey to take over; she can’t afford to wallow in her grief any longer.

“I would’ve gotten you help,” she mutters, bending to press a kiss to Emma’s forehead through the bag. “I wish you would’ve let me.”

She doesn’t tell the coroner she’s left, simply walks out and lets the doors bang shut loud enough behind her to serve as notice, priding herself on how quickly she’s able to wipe away the tears with the sleeve of her jacket as she heads outside. 

It occurs to her, sitting in the car afterwards, that her sheets are still going to smell like mango shampoo when she goes home.

When Dr. Samuels emerges from the building for his lunch break five minutes later, he’s kind enough to pretend not to see her breaking down.

•

Sitting across the table from her, anyone else would comment on Brooke Maddox’s awe-inducing ability to still look composed in the midst of shocking loss. They would note that not a hair is out of place, would compliment her non-standard mourning attire of a cashmere turtleneck and slim cigarette pants, would be impressed by her flawless makeup and impeccable posture. The PTSA moms would be pleased, certainly.

But Audrey has faced death too many times with Brooke Maddox, and she understands the signs of devastation in her that no one else does. She sees the red rimming her eyes, the dullness in her skin, the way her perfectly manicured hand shakes as she lifts her coffee cup, and she knows, in her core, that Brooke is completely torn apart. She’s just too used to the song and dance that accompanies loss in Lakewood to let anyone else see her grieve.

“It’s pretty shitty that the first text I got from you in 48 hours was an invitation to coffee,” Brooke says, lips pressed into a thin line. “I’m no master of grief or anything, but considering the last conversation we had was literally me telling you that our _best friend_ was dead, I kind of expected a little more than that.”

“Brooke—” she starts, but the other girl throws up a hand to stop her.

“No. I don’t want the excuse,” she says, voice cracking. “I get it, Audrey. You lost your person. But so did I, okay? The least you could’ve done was let me know you were okay, or that you had made it to town. I had to find out from Stavo’s dad that you were back home.”

“I’m sorry,” is all she can think of in response, staring at the pattern of chips in the table she practically memorized in middle school. This was her safe space, once upon a time, before Emma started working here in high school and she had to avoid the place like the plague. When Piper and Kieran came to town, it became their shared safe space, the place where they brainstormed solutions and debated over possible suspects. There was a time when Emma had every member of the Lakewood Six’s coffee order memorized.

Now half of them are dead.

She must look utterly pathetic, because she can sense Brooke softening as her best friend reaches across the table to grab her hand. “Look, I won’t hold it against you. It’s been a minute since we’ve had to deal with losing somebody,” she says softly. “But don’t disappear on me like that again, alright? You scared me.”

They do a silent pinky swear, topping it off with a childish pinky shake that Emma taught them, and tears burn in Audrey’s eyes. Is everything going to remind her of Emma now? She doesn’t remember it feeling this way with Rachel, but she barely had time to process that loss, what with the murder spree, and Emma was only absent from her life for a few years of it. She can hear Noah’s voice in her head, explaining to her why there’s more memories to haunt her here, but she wishes it didn’t make so much sense. It would be so much easier to forget, or to never have known at all in the first place.

She takes a swig of coffee to try to ease the dryness in her mouth, but it tastes bitter going down, and Audrey can’t remember why she ordered it in the first place. Getting to the coffee shop and placing her order all blur together – she’d gone through the motions like a zombie, not really processing who or what was in front of her. For all she knows, she could’ve ordered Brooke’s favorite disgusting green juice, and it probably still would’ve tasted the same.

“Flat white, one raw sugar, huh?” Brooke says, letting out a sad laugh. “Guess I should’ve done the same, poured one out for her, too.”

The metallic taste of grief coats her tongue as the memory comes flooding back and Audrey realizes she’s ordered Emma’s favorite drink. She pushes it away from her like it’s poison, and she doesn’t miss how Brooke’s eyes dull at the sight.

Of all the people who would’ve still been stuck in Lakewood by now, Audrey had never imagined Brooke would belong to that category. Her plans for moving to New York after high school had been solid – she’d earned her bachelor’s in marketing, seemed to have promising job offers, had a gorgeous apartment in Queens with Stavo that Audrey and Emma had visited a couple of times. There was never any indication that, out of all of them, Brooke would be the one to see her dreams derailed.

A couple months after graduation, though, she and Emma had been an hour into bingeing their latest Netflix obsession and stuffing their faces with Chinese food when Emma got the call. Brooke was frantic, sobbing, on the other line. Audrey hadn’t heard her like that since Jake had passed.

Her mom had been charged with tax fraud, she said. The Maddox estate had been thoroughly audited, and so much of what they owned was not truly theirs, was going to be seized by the government. She had to go back to Lakewood to salvage what she could, to see if anything could be done about the house and what her dad had left behind.

It was awful, watching Brooke go through that. She wouldn’t let Audrey and Emma come down to help her until every trace of police presence was gone from Lakewood. The bank took the house back, so Brooke moved into a studio off of Main Street that could only politely be termed “cozy”. After three months of waiting to get the OK from their friend, when Audrey and Emma finally got there, it was a total shock to the system. Brooke was picture-perfect as always, but she was surrounded by utter chaos – her new place was a dingy mess, she’d lost her prestigious job offers in the city because of the scandal, and Stavo was still stuck back in New York trying to figure out what to do with their lease.

But Emma, of course, knew what to do. She’d whisked Brooke away to the Sale section of the closest Pottery Barn, and by the end of the weekend, Brooke’s place was so done up that no one would’ve been able to tell what a dump it had been at the start. Better yet, seeing the smile on their friend’s face was well worth almost getting crushed in glazed pottery.

Brooke hasn’t left Lakewood since. Stavo tied up their affairs in New York and moved back to be with her a couple months after, and she’s made a decent life for herself here. Watching her now, though, Audrey thinks she spots a tinge of regret in Brooke’s eyes. It could be regret for not being able to help Emma, it could be regret over not ordering a better-tasting drink, but really, Audrey thinks, it’s got to be regret over not leaving the place that has never once stopped hurting them.

Lakewood never stops taking, even from hundreds of miles away. At least in New York, though, Brooke could have escaped into the anonymity of a city of eight million people. There’s no escaping in Lakewood; even now, Audrey catches her kindergarten teacher looking their way from a sneaky spot in the corner. When their eyes meet, the older woman ducks her head, rightfully embarrassed.

“I gotta go,” Brooke sighs, tossing her phone in her purse. “Work meeting in thirty, and I think I’m gonna need to get a good cry out before then. I’ll see you tonight, though, right?”

Audrey squeezes her eyes shut and tries to suppress her groan. How could she have forgotten already? Emma had been staying at her childhood home when she died, but the new owners are supposed to move in next month, so the police need her belongings cleared out ASAP. As the emergency contacts listed on Emma’s phone and with Kevin Duval seemingly unreachable, the duty has fallen on Audrey and Brooke to do that grim task, with Noah and Stavo graciously agreeing to help.

“Yeah,” she says, the harsh fluorescent lighting stinging her eyes when she reopens them. “See you there.”

Brooke doesn’t respond, just smiles sadly and squeezes her hand goodbye. Audrey watches her leave with a sinking feeling in her gut, not so different from what she experienced in her dream flashing back to Emma’s last morning with her.

Brooke probably won’t die any time soon (at least, Audrey prays to some abstract God that won’t be the case), but she gets the feeling that their friendship isn’t long for this world. Emma was always the glue that held them together.

When she hears the unmistakable sound of an iPhone snapping a picture, Audrey doesn’t even bother to curse them out. Let her former neighbors take whatever entertainment they can get from her.

Maybe it’s the price she deserves to pay for letting Emma go.

~

_“Do you think we put in enough paprika?” Emma asks, brow furrowing as she peers into the rice-filled skillet on the stove._

_“I think we’re probably fine?” Audrey says, scanning over the recipe again. Brooke emailed it to them last month, insisting it was “_ god-sent _” and that they needed to try it immediately, but she and Emma both tend to be a bit cooking-averse as of late, so they’ve only just gotten around to it now. Brooke would be pleased to know she’s made their way into one of their date nights, if she actually knew they were having date nights._

_Yeah, that’s still a piece of news they’ve neglected to share with anyone, mostly out of respect for Emma’s anxiety over it. Audrey tries not to think about it too much, lest she send herself into an overly-analytical spiral, but she’s hoping they’ll get around to telling Maggie soon. Emma’s mom is basically like a second mom to her, and if Audrey knows her half as well as she thinks she does, there’s no way she’ll judge them for what basically feels like the natural next step in their relationship._

_Emma’s phone starts to ring, interrupting the_ Chill Friday Night Vibes _playlist they’ve got going on Spotify, and Audrey starts at the unexpected sound, almost fumbling the bottle of bay leaves right out of her hands. It’s no secret that Piper and Kieran have forever made her jumpy around any type of phone notification; it’s why she keeps her phone on “vibrate” most of the time, even though that’s led to a few awkward scenarios with her missing Emma’s “I’m here” texts or weekly check-in phone calls from her mother._

_“Shit, this better be important,” Emma mutters, hurriedly wiping her hands off on their dish towel before she reaches for the phone. Audrey resists the urge to snicker at Emma’s irritation; she’s seen firsthand how much Emma hates to be interrupted when she’s really trying to focus, and this paella certainly hasn’t been as easy as Brooke promised._

_Audrey busies herself with trying to look helpful as Emma answers the phone call, shaking the pan around a bit like she’s some knock-off lesbian version of Gordon Ramsay. Though cooking has never been anything close to her strong suit, it doesn’t feel like as much of a chore with Emma as it would with others, maybe because it lets her imagine a future with lots of evenings spent cooking together, mornings where attempts to make breakfast end in powdered sugar dusting their faces and kissing on the countertop, special occasions where she can improve her cooking skills enough to surprise Emma with fancy dinners or the peach cobbler that’s been her favorite dessert since they were five—_

_A loud clatter sounds behind her, and she whips around instantly at the sound, domestic daydreams disappearing as she turns to find Emma’s phone face-down on the ground and Emma standing there, face drained of all color, just_ staring _at her with a kind of helplessness Audrey hasn’t seen since their high school days. It brings her back to the panic attacks on the stairwell, memories of dropped math textbooks and crowds of strangers they couldn’t trust, and Audrey is at her best friend’s side in an instant, muscle memory kicking in and taking over._

_“Breathe for me, Em,” she murmurs, tucking a stray strand of hair behind Emma’s ear. The sheer devastation in the other girl’s eyes is enough to stir anxiety in Audrey’s own chest, and she prays that whatever this is, they can fix it, that there’s a solution at hand that she can offer to make the pain and fear stop, if only for a little bit._

_“My mom is dead, Audrey,” Emma chokes out, tears spilling down her cheeks._

_“What?” Audrey whispers, heart starting to pound. Maggie can’t be dead. Emma can’t have basically lost both of her parents by age 23 – surely, the universe can’t be so cruel?_

_It’s a stupid question to ask, she realizes. The universe has never given a fuck about them, its only saving grace being somehow allowing her, Emma, Brooke, and Noah to come out of Piper and Kieran’s games alive. They’ve had peace in their lives for too many years now, and it must be hungry to see them suffer again._

_It makes Audrey furious, both to know that her person is dealing with such an awful loss and also to know that there is absolutely nothing she can do to make that loss any easier or more bearable._

_“I’ve got you,” she says firmly, gathering Emma in her arms as she sobs into her shirt, soaking the collar. “And I’m not gonna leave. I promise.”_

•

_A sudden brain aneurysm, the hospital tells Emma. Just one of those random instances of bad luck, possibly worsened by stress. They’d done everything they could, but in the end, it hadn’t been enough._

_In the days and weeks following Maggie’s death, this is just one of the many pieces of information that Audrey processes for her girlfriend, absorbing what she worries Emma can’t or shouldn’t. It gets filed into her brain alongside the details of funeral arrangements, the costs of caskets, the insane legalese of tying up Maggie’s affairs and getting the Duval house ready for sale._

_(At first, she thinks Emma won’t be open to selling her childhood home, but Emma is the first person to bring it up; in fact, it’s the first question she asks the lawyer two days after Maggie’s passing. It’s slightly concerning, but Audrey is by no means an expert in grief, practiced with it though she may be, and she feels like she doesn’t get to comment on it. With Lakewood’s real estate market, it’ll take months, maybe even years, to sell anyway, so she marks it in her head as a conversation better had at a date yet to be determined.)_

_They put off going back to Lakewood for as long as they possibly can, already knowing the gossip and intrusion that’s awaiting them. The problem of the funeral, along with Maggie’s unclaimed belongings from the hospital, necessitates a return trip, though. It goes by mercifully quickly, a blur of tears and condolence cards, and Audrey doesn’t say anything when she finds Emma wine-drunk in the kitchen on their last night in town. Emma simply collapses into her arms when she sees her, sniffling and apologetic, and Audrey tucks her into bed in the way she’s always wished she could’ve done after the losses Piper and Kieran inflicted on them._

_It's painful, seeing Emma like this, and there are so many moments where Audrey has to hide her panic – in the moments where Emma’s eyes are dull and flat, and she worries that she’ll never see the light return to them again; the moments when she wakes up in the middle of the night to the sound of sobs next to her, and all the hugs and well-intentioned platitudes in the world can’t pull Emma out of her grief;_ especially _in the moments when Emma confesses she thinks this feeling will never go away, that things might never get any better._

_“Maybe Piper and Kieran won in the end, after all,” Emma says one night, burnt out and bitter. “What’s the point of us surviving if we’re just going to keep losing people?”_

_“That’s_ life _, Em. I know it sucks, I know it’s awful, but your mom wouldn’t want you to give up or think that Piper and Kieran won because she’s gone,” Audrey insists, trying to keep the concern out of her voice as she places the cover on the pasta she’s boiling._

_“You don’t know that.” Emma’s voice cracks, and Audrey’s heart breaks._

_“Yes, I do,” she promises, kneeling by Emma’s side and taking her hands in hers. “Look, we got through Piper and Kieran, and we’ll get through this too, okay?”_

_“I’m not sure that I_ can _get through it,” Emma confesses. She’s trying so hard not to cry, and it makes Audrey’s chest ache._

_“Sure, maybe alone you couldn’t, but you’re_ not _alone, Emma. You’ve got me. And I swear to you, we get through this together,” she says, serious as ever, “or we don’t get through it at all.”_

_There are tears streaming down Emma’s face, but she manages a tiny smile, and Audrey has never been so proud of her._

_“Okay,” she says. “Together.”_

•

“You know, there wasn’t a note.”

Noah stops digging through his bag of popcorn and turns to look at her. “Audrey,” he says, a note of warning in his tone.

“I know, I know,” she huffs, throwing her hands up in a show of deference. “It’s just–” She lets out a slow breath, suddenly unsure if she’s going to be able to get the words out, or if she even wants to in the first place. Noah is her best friend, has always occupied a different but no less special part of her heart, but there are some conversations that are too difficult to have even with him, that feel too much like laying her soul completely bare right after she’s lost a piece of it.

“You think I don’t know what you’re getting tagged in? I get tagged, too,” Noah says quietly, and Audrey has to close her eyes to brace herself against the wave of pain that washes over her at the brokenness in his voice, the brokenness of this whole situation. It’s absurd to lose someone at 24. It’s even more absurd to be tagged in constant conspiracy theories and Reddit posts about your best friend’s death, but that’s what they’ve been subjected to since the news of Emma’s suicide hit the public, to the point that Audrey has had to turn off her Instagram notifications. The recent acknowledgment by Sheriff Acosta in a press conference that there was no suicide note found with Emma’s body hasn’t helped matters.

The funeral is tomorrow, five days after Audrey’s arrival in Lakewood, and right now, she’s not even sure she has it in her to attend. Without a note, there’s no way of knowing what Emma would’ve wanted, so they’ve arranged a small burial service only open to close friends, with the reception after being open to the public, mostly for the sake of old teachers and acquaintances who still want to pay their respects. She’s trying to do her best by Emma, but it will come with the price of bearing the town’s judgement, and that feels like a heavy price to pay in this moment.

“I just can’t help but wonder, dude,” she says, staring into the bottom of her beer bottle. Eye contact is often too painful these days. “What if they’re onto something? I mean, this feels like it came out of _nowhere_ , literally nowhere, and with no note – and the fact that she killed herself just like I was going to—”

Noah swallows hard at that last part, and Audrey flinches. She’s forgotten there are some things even Noah doesn’t know.

“Lots of people hang themselves, Audrey,” he says gently, setting down his controller and pausing the game on the screen. “And lots of those people also don’t tell anyone they’re planning to do just that. It might’ve been an impulsive thing – we’ll never know, and that sucks, I know. For what it’s worth, I don’t think the way she died says anything more than her maybe getting inspiration from you—”

Audrey sucks in a breath, the words hitting her hard, and Noah’s face falls instantly. “Fuck, I didn’t mean it like that, I’m sure that’s not what happened—”

“Doesn’t matter,” she says brusquely, swigging down the last of her beer and letting out a bitter laugh. “She’s dead anyway, right? Why obsess over the small details?”

She’s aware of the wetness on her cheeks for a few seconds before it occurs to her that she’s started crying. The sofa dips as Noah climbs up, arms encircling her just as the tears really begin, and suddenly she’s 16 again, crying into her best friend’s favorite Mr. Fantastic T-shirt, the scent of the same shitty drugstore cologne he’s been wearing since middle school surrounding her.

“You’re so badass, Audrey,” he murmurs, rubbing soothing circles into her back. “Ridiculously strong. But I know it hurts – you gotta let it out.”

“I don’t know how to do this, Noah,” she sobs, fist curling around the hem of his shirt. “It’s not like with Rachel. She was my whole _life_.”

“You really wanna know what I think?” he asks, pulling back to meet her gaze. Audrey nods, at a loss for words, and Noah sighs.

“Losing Riley and Zoë – I know it’s not the same as losing Emma, they weren’t in my life for nearly as long, but it’s a different kind of pain, y’know?” he says, foot tapping an anxious beat on the ground. “It’s the pain of losing what could have been, losing that first love. A lot of people didn’t get it, and when I went to Will’s funeral, and even after Kieran confessed, I kept thinking about how much _worse_ Emma’s pain must’ve been, ’cause she lost people she’d been in a long-term relationship with. I don’t know if you remember, but I got a comment about it on the blog, and I guess Emma saw that I’d responded, kinda joking about it and saying that my losses were just Piper and Kieran warming up for the big stuff.”

“ _Noah_ ,” Audrey whispers, eyes wide. It’s hard to realize how blind she’s been to some of his grief, looking back – of course she’d been there for the funerals and the late-night gaming sessions, the movie binges where she simply handed Noah a tissue in silence if he started crying and was promptly sworn to secrecy after, but she’s never thought about it in this way. It should’ve been so obvious, she thinks.

“And you know what she said?” Noah continues. “She told me that pain doesn’t discriminate, and even if the source is different, we can all understand how badly it hurts and help each other move on from it. And that’s what I’m gonna tell you. Losing Riley and Zoë doesn’t really compare to what you’ve lost with Emma. But I gave into the grief before we left for college, spent that summer gaming and just crying whenever the hell I felt like it, and I think you should do the same. Give in, Audrey. Stop fighting it.”

He squeezes her hand tightly, not like he’s worried she’ll break in the way everyone else in town seems to fear, and Audrey’s never appreciated her best friend more than in this moment.

Noah hasn’t been by her side for as long as Emma was, and it’s true that there will be some parts of her he’ll simply never see, some things he just won’t get in the way Emma did.

But he’s here, and he cares – and right now, that’s the best kind of gift.

•

“That was a lovely service, Audrey,” her mom whispers in her ear, hugging her tight as people stream into the funeral home’s parlor. “I know she would’ve loved it.” 

“Thanks, Mom,” she says, pretending like she won’t forever have the image of dropping daffodils onto Emma’s casket burned into the back of her eyelids. “I’ll see you back at the house soon, okay?” Her mother nods and disappears into the crowd, and Audrey feels her temples begin to throb with the first stirrings of a migraine. There are so many people here, so many more well-wishers than she’d anticipated. Luckily (maybe), it seems like the funeral home anticipated such a turn-out, probably because of Emma’s revered “survivor” status, but it’s a much bigger affair than Audrey’s emotions have the patience for.

It’s all so fucked up, she thinks, plastering a small smile on her face as she spots a group of PTSA moms approaching her, most likely the mothers of Emma’s high school friends. She’s just come back from the graveside service, and her heart feels like it’s torn in half, but here she stands, forced to play dress-up and pretend she didn’t want to crawl right into that grave with the girl she loves.

“Audrey, sweetheart,” coos one of the mothers, batting mascara-caked lashes at her. “We’re so sorry for your loss.”

“Thank you,” she says tightly, reminding herself to breathe.

“We were just so surprised,” adds another one, taking a loud sip of her lemonade. Brooke had FaceTimed Audrey last night through tears while she made it, pretending to complain about the amount of sugar in the mixture but knowing that Emma always preferred the rot-your-teeth kind anyway. Audrey resists the urge to knock the cup out of the woman’s hand.

“Me too,” Audrey grits out, wishing she had something to punch.

“Emma was just so _sweet_ ,” a third mother says, her friends nodding vigorously. “If anything were to happen, we always thought—”

“Always thought what?” Brooke interrupts, gliding up to them in a ridiculously high pair of heels, Stavo at her side, and Audrey has never been so grateful to see her friends.

The mother who had been speaking stammers for a moment, then falls silent. The women sip at their refreshments loudly, French manicures gripping their cups tightly, and Audrey hears the unspoken words hanging in the air clear as day. _We always thought it would be you._

She refuses to give them the pleasure of confirming that, for many years, they were almost right.

“Well, we ought to go make the rounds,” the first mother finally says, letting out an awkward chuckle. “We’ll pray for you, honey.” The group flits away in a flurry of titters and crumpling cups, and Audrey’s glad to see them go.

“Thank you,” she says, turning to Brooke and Stavo. “You saved my ass. I was about five minutes away from earning an assault charge.”

“They’re assholes, Audrey,” Stavo says. “Don’t listen to them.”

“‘Catty bitches’ is more like it,” Brooke snorts, glaring at the women’s retreating figures. “They wouldn’t know class if it bit them on the ass.”

“Colorful language for a funeral, Brooke,” Noah comments, strolling up to join them. Audrey’s headache slightly subsides at his arrival, and she allows herself a tiny sigh. Just a few more hours, and this awful nightmare-turned-reality will be over. Just a few more hours, and she can retreat to the comfort of the bedroom where Kieran and Piper taught her how to grieve so many years ago.

“Penny for your thoughts, Jensen?” Stavo says, jolting her out of her thoughts.

“Just that I want this to be over already,” she mutters, scuffing her shoe on the marble floor. “Emma would’ve hated this part. Maybe I shouldn’t have done it.”

“Don’t talk like that, Audrey,” Brooke cuts in, brow furrowing. “Emma was used to Lakewood’s bullshit. I know she understands.”

Hearing Brooke refer to Emma in the present like that hits her like a punch to the gut, but seeing her friends around her, all together again for the first time since Emma’s passing, and spotting the absence that is so markedly obvious hurts worse.

“I need some air,” she manages to get out, chest constricting like a vise, before she dashes for the closest exit.

Their group will never be the same – their _lives_ will never be the same, so many people missing out on Emma’s love for the rest of their days, so many left without the chance to say goodbye.

And she could’ve stopped it.

~

_The fight starts in such a stupid way. They were cuddling on the couch, watching an indie flick Noah recommended but hardly paying attention to anything on the screen. Brooke had FaceTimed Emma, and Audrey had joined in, wanting to catch up. She hadn’t thought anything of it. It was just Brooke, after all, Brooke who they’d been through everything with, and the word “babe” had just slipped out._

_But Brooke’s perceptive, and so of course she commented on it, and Emma had brushed it off with a poorly-executed lie, and that_ stung _, more than Audrey could’ve thought it would. So here they are, sitting on opposite ends of the couch now, Emma gripping her phone so tightly her fingers blanch around it, Audrey holding back the angry tears that always come out when she least wants them to._

_“It’s been a year and a half, Emma,” she hisses, face flushing with anger. “Almost two fucking years, and you still won’t tell anyone about me. Not even our best friends! Are you ashamed of me, or what?”_

_“I’m not_ ashamed _of you, Audrey,” Emma says hoarsely, eyes glimmering with unshed tears. “It just takes time, okay? Nobody else even knows I’m gay, let alone that I’m in a relationship with my childhood best friend! You don’t just throw that kind of stuff out there.”_

_“But I’m not just ‘stuff’, Emma,” Audrey snaps, cringing inside at the hurt that flashes across Emma’s face. “I’m a_ person _, and I’m your_ girlfriend _, and I’m supposed to matter enough to you that you want to share me with people, or at least our best friends! I know coming out is scary, but Brooke, Noah, Stavo, none of them care, they’d never judge you! Why is it taking you almost two years just to admit you’re with me? Are you trying to hide me or something?”_

_“No, Audrey, I swear I’m not,” Emma insists. “I would never want to hide you.”_

_“Then why can’t you tell them?” she demands._

_“I don’t_ know _,” Emma chokes out, crying openly now. “I don’t know why I don’t want to tell anyone. I don’t know why it scares the shit out of me. I don’t know why it puts a pit in my stomach to think about admitting that I’m gay to people who I survived pure hell with, but it_ does _. And I’m sorry that I can’t give you anything better than that, but that’s the truth.”_

_It cracks Audrey’s chest in half, seeing Emma this raw, this upset, and all the anger dissipates from her in an instant. “Fuck, Em, I’m sorry—”_

_“Look, I’m tired. We can talk about this in the morning,” Emma sniffles, wiping at her eyes. “Love you.” Audrey desperately wants to reach out to hug her as she leaves the room, but she knows space is probably more important right now; she’s already done enough to hurt Emma tonight._

_A_ bzzz _sounds from the other end of the couch as she stands up to head to bed herself; Emma’s phone must have fallen out as she got up to leave, she thinks._

_And she swears she doesn’t mean to look as she picks up the phone, but it’s already unlocked, and open to Instagram, and –_

_And the things she sees on there are awful. Comments calling Emma a murderous whore, accusing her of orchestrating the Lakewood victims’ deaths to benefit her, claiming Audrey herself had teamed up with Piper and Kieran and that Emma had gone along with them so she could –_

_Well, Audrey doesn’t bother to finish reading that one. It’s too disgusting, but she’s able to read between the lines._

_There are some people out there who truly think Emma has been in love with Audrey from day one, that she’d arranged the killings in their town to play out some sick fantasy that would “serve” them both._

_And this, she realizes, nausea slamming into her like a freight train, is why Emma is reluctant to tell anyone about their relationship. Not because she’s ashamed of Audrey. Not because she’s ashamed of being gay. But because of the vitriol she still receives, even years later; because of the fear that somebody, somehow, will find out about their relationship and twist it into some corrupted fantasy of their own imagination._

_She resolves that night to never press Emma about it again._

_Audrey didn’t have a choice in coming out when she did – the leaked video with Rachel had taken that._

_But she sure as hell can give Emma a choice._

•

“Audrey.”

She starts at the touch of a hand on her shoulder, suddenly ripped out of the awful memory, and looks up to see Brooke standing there, clearly concerned.

She takes in her surroundings. Apparently, her brain had taken her to Emma’s grave on auto-pilot; impressive, considering it’s just been dug. The soil’s slightly damp, and her pants are soaked from kneeling on the ground.

“Where’d you go?” Brooke asks, biting her lip. “I saw your eyes when I got here – you were way deep into your own head. And you’re at Emma’s grave, so—” She gestures to the temporary marker indicating where Emma’s headstone will go. “Not hard to guess at what you might be thinking.”

“I think it’s my fault, Brooke,” she whispers, voice cracking on her friend’s name.

“What? That’s crazy, Auds. Don’t talk like that,” Brooke retorts. Shockingly, she gets onto the ground, too, kneeling by Audrey in spite of the shitty conditions and her probably-designer tights.

“No, it’s not crazy,” she says quietly. “Emma and I had been dating for a year and a half when she died. I think I made her feel pressured to come out, or maybe being in a new-ish relationship was hard – maybe just the idea of coming out was hard, I don’t know, but I can’t think of anything else that would’ve driven her to do it, or that she would’ve hidden from me. It has to be us – has to be me.” The letters of Emma’s name on the marker blur together as tears form in her eyes.

“She told me a month ago.”

“What?” Audrey turns to face Brooke so quickly that it makes her head spin.

“Yeah.” Brooke’s rueful smile hurts to look at. “She told all of us. We kept it quiet because she wanted to surprise you. She said she was gonna take you back to Lakewood soon and invite all of us over; I told her she should make it fancy.”

“It still doesn’t make sense,” Audrey says, shaking her head. “If she had all these plans, if she had finally just come out to you guys, then why did she leave? Why did she come back just to kill herself?”

“Emma had some serious trauma,” Brooke says softly, placing a hand on Audrey’s knee and squeezing gently. “Obviously, we all do, but I think losing Maggie brought a lot of that back up for her. And the hate she got online – well, that was a lot, too. She was so good about caring for others that I bet she didn’t wanna burden us, or feel like she was burdening us, really. We couldn’t have known.”

“I feel like I should have,” she mutters, staring at the pile of flowers already placed around Emma’s marker.

“That’s not _on_ you, Audrey,” Brooke insists. Audrey catches the scent of mangoes, and her chest tightens at the realization that Brooke must have bought Emma’s favorite shampoo.

“Emma could be impulsive sometimes,” Brooke continues. “Especially after what we went through. She felt like she needed to make the most of life, so people like Piper and Kieran couldn’t take anything else away from her. But that also manifested in shitty ways. And I think that’s probably what this was – an impulsive decision. Though God knows I wish she’d just gotten a crappy tattoo instead. Much less trauma on my end.” She lets out a dry laugh, and Audrey reaches over to squeeze her hand.

“Seconded,” is all she can think to say, and Brooke laughs again.

“You got her through Maggie,” Brooke says after a beat, serious again. “She told me about what you said, and how much it helped her. So I’ll say it to you now: We get through this together, Audrey, or we won’t get through it at all. I’m here for you, Noah’s here for you, Stavo’s here for you – we’ve all got your back. Just let us take some of that pain, so you don’t have to sit there and blame yourself for all of it.”

Audrey doesn’t bother to hide the tears that come this time.

~

_Emma tells her she loves her on a Tuesday._

_“I think I’ve always loved you, Audrey Jensen,” she says, grinning so wide that her dimples take up half of her face. “I was just too blind to realize how deep that went. But I know now, and I don’t want to spend another second ignoring that. Not when all I want is you.”_

_It’s the first time in the history of their friendship that Audrey is struck speechless, but far from the first time that Emma’s words have made her cry, and Emma giggles at the taste of salt on her lips as they kiss. “The next million will be better,” Audrey promises as they break apart, giddy and half-dizzy, both of them laughing like idiots. “Just kinda hard to kiss well when you’re crying.”_

_“Just getting to have another million kisses with you will be enough,” Emma promises, eyes shining._

_“Oh, you’ll have more than a million,” Audrey says, leaning in to kiss her again. “I plan on being stuck with you for as long as humanly possible.”_

_“And I’ll stick with you for twice as long as that.”_

•

People tell her that moving a thousand miles away can’t take away the pain.

So Audrey ignores them, and moves 5,000 miles away instead.

They’re right, to a degree; moving doesn’t take away the pain, as if that could ever be possible. In many ways, actually, moving abroad enhances it; she sees the winding streets, drinks in the quaint cafés and stunning countryside and winces, thinking of how much Emma would love all of it.

They’d always wanted to travel together. It had been on their joint bucket list, a goal to tackle once they hit 30 and had enough money saved up to backpack around Europe.

It’s not fair that it’s up to Audrey now to finish a bucket list for two on her own.

She’s shit at languages – Emma was always the better of the two of them with that, perpetually outshined her in French class – but she does her best, and the locals seem to appreciate it. It might be a pitying sort of kindness, gained from the sadness she knows is obvious in her eyes, but she’ll take what she can get in a country where she barely speaks the language. Especially when it gets her a discount on baguettes.

She runs a tiny studio out of her apartment, paints until her wrists ache and she fears she’s developing carpal tunnel. To actually make money, she helps out teaching English at the local high school; the kids there remind her of high-school-aged Brooke with their snarkiness and wit. She updates Noah regularly on the latest in French cinema and sends Stavo the best pictures she can manage for inspiration.

It’s not perfect. She barely scrapes by at times, she spends too much money often, and she definitely hasn’t perfected the art of the French “r”. But it’s a start, and that’s all she really needs.

She will never have answers; she’s accepted that now. She’s never going to know why Emma chose to die, why she didn’t get the chance to help her, why an ending meant for three was changed into an ending for two. She’ll never know when being a final girl stopped being good enough.

She will never know these things, and she’ll never get the life with Emma she dreamed of for so long. That hurts. But it would hurt more to stay in stasis, to remain caught in a life she planned for two – so she goes and lives the life she’s had to create for one.

The pain will never go. But in a way, that means Emma’s never really gone, either.

So Audrey will learn how to be a final girl without her.


End file.
